The Glass Guide to Art Central Hong Kong 2017

UPCOMING in its third year, Art Central Hong Kong will run from March 21 until 25, with programming extending into April. An event intent on the democracy of artistic experience, the galleries and artists it plays host to hail from all over the Asia-Pacific, with a smattering from throughout the Western world; their works span nearly all types of media, from street art to large scale pieces to textiles; and the fair dedicates spaces for both newer from the last six years and for more established names in the fine arts milieu.

This year, Sydney’s 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and Asia Society Hong Kong will be hosting artistic experiences, evolving traditional art fair viewership from passive to active with its series of immersive performances and a special talks programme. And Swarovski, also a third year incumbent to Art Central, has returned as an Official Partner. Highlighting its winner for the Swarovski Designers of the Future Award, Yuri Suzuki, its interactive installation Sharevari will feature a mechanical crystallophone, an exploration into crystal material as acoustic machinery. This exhibition will also be audience interactive; it will greet incomers at the fair, which is situated opposite Hong Kong’s City Hall near the city centre.

The galleries participating in this year’s Art Central, again, run the gamut of creativity, media and material, artists and backgrounds. Rén Space of Hong Kong will be premiering a new work by famed Pop artist Yu Youhan; radical art space Over the Influence will be representing French comic artist and director Enki Bilal and urban street artists Invader, Jerkface, Jun Seo Hahm and Vhils; MILL6 Foundation will exhibit the multi-dimensional, multi-media grouping of works by due Aziz+Cucher, Yin-Ju Chen of Taiwan, and local Hong Kong artist Morgan Wong in its show Line of Times; Hong Kong Contemporary Art Foundation will be debuting Tomokazu Matsuyama’s magically fokloric first institutional solo exhibition; in addition to two exhibitions at chi art space, K11 Art Foundation is presenting with New York City’s MoMA PS1 (whose envelope-pushing Klaus Biesenbach and Peter Eleey are curating) the fruits of the two institutions’ partnership and research.

In their words, the project “showcases artistic practices in China and the West that respond to, or are affected by, the various infrastructures that facilitate our digital ecosystem.” Additional offsite participating galleries include Simon Lee Gallery, Lehmann Maupin and de Sarthe Gallery; coinciding exhibitions and programming include Asian Art Hong Kong’s city-wide public events series (including talks, tours and other specially curated arts viewings), a Warhol in China photography exhibit put on by Phillips at the Mandarin Oriental, announcement of United Overseas Bank’s Ink Futures Award recipient, and the talk “Social Media is Killing Art” moderated by Tim Marlow, Artistic Director of the Royal Academy of the Arts.

It’s a comprehensive approach to Asian art as it interacts and intersects with Western and European arts, an extensive programme that keeps pace with the busy-ness and momentum of Hong Kong as a city.

Mehwish Iqbal_Carcas_2016_collagraph,etching,silkscreen,embroiderythread_95x120cm_MContemporaryMehwish Iqbal Carcas, 2016. Courtesy M Contemporary, Sydney

JamesAmbrose_ArtCentral2016_HR-732Art Central 2016 Fair View © Art Central

World Painting 1Greg Edwards. World Painting 1, 2015 布面油畫 182.88 x 213.36 厘米
鳴謝藝術家及紐約 47 Canal 畫廊

Jerkface_Double_Acrylic on canvas_121x188cm_2017 (1)
Jerkface. Double, 2017. Acrylic on canvas, 121×88 cm
Amalia Ulman 1
Amalia Ulman From the series Excellences & Perfections, 2014, digital C-print dry mounted on aluminum,
125 x 125 x 2.7 cm. Courtesy the artist and James Fuentes LLC
 
by Emily Rae Pellerin
For more information and for ticketing, visit here or Instagram (#artcentralHK).

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